With a house full of sons, the idea of having a girl was anathema to us, especially my husband, Martin, who is himself one of three boys. Photo / Thinkstock
With a house full of sons, the idea of having a girl was anathema to us, especially my husband, Martin, who is himself one of three boys. Photo / Thinkstock
Like Cate Blanchett, Angela Epstein had a daughter after a brood of sons. Family life can be a challenge.
There are few things Cate Blanchett and I have in common. I don't have bone structure like a slalom run. Nor are there many Oscars cluttering my mantelpiece (though I do have a mildewed medal celebrating third place in the school egg and spoon race). But it seems that now our worlds finally collide. For the 46-year-old actress, already a mother to three boys - Dashiell, 13, Roman, 10, and Ignatius, seven - has adopted a baby girl called Edith.
In doing so, the Cinderella star and her husband, Andrew Upton, have put their family dynamic in step with my own, since I am also mum to three sons and a daughter, born six years after the youngest boy.
On making news of the adoption public, Blanchett declared, "It's wonderful to welcome a little girl into our fold. We're besotted - fourth time around, it's extraordinary."
It's a feeling I know only too well. I still remember the midwife at my daughter's birth, lifting the baby with the panache of a tennis champ bearing the Wimbledon trophy and phlegmatically proclaiming, "Yep, definitely a girl." At that moment it felt as though the entire universe had shuddered to a halt. With a house full of sons, the idea of having a girl was anathema to us, especially my husband, Martin, who is himself one of three boys.
But the Blanchett/Upton household should take note. For, spool forward 11 years, and that once warm, pink, milky bundle - our precious daughter, Sophie - is now a steely-willed, determined young lady who has proved herself to be far more of an, ahem, challenge than the combined effort of parenting her three brothers ever was.
It's not, apparently, an uncommon phenomenon. A straw poll among friends and colleagues whose daughters are the younger siblings of older brothers suggests this dynamic is especially trying. One work friend, a mother of two boys and a girl, ended up seeking counselling over the sheer bloody-mindedness of her implacable, maddeningly despotic daughter (aged, er, nine).
"I was at my wits end," she told me. "I began to think it was about me, that I was lacking something as a mother. My daughter was such a strong character, always answering back, never complying with the simplest of requests."
There is often a heightened fuss when a new baby is the opposite sex to its siblings. Look no further than our very own Princess Charlotte, born on May 2, the date of my own daughter's birthday ("There's only one princess around here," hissed my Sophie, knowingly). But the problem is compounded when there are multiple same-sex siblings.
So do Cate Blanchett - and indeed Victoria Beckham - have it all to come? And is there a way to sidestep the seemingly inevitable?
"I think the problem is rooted in everyone else's perception," says Barbara Woolfstein, 49, a charity fundraiser, whose daughter, also Sophie, now 17, arrived after Adam, 19, Jake, 22 and Alexander, 24.
"Everyone else made us feel that this little person was super-special, even though I genuinely would have been delighted if baby number four had been another boy. The only way to tackle it was not to make Sophie different, but to treat her as one of the boys - not easy, since she was surrounded by people making a fuss of her because she was a girl. She spent her first year under a rain canopy in her buggy, being taken to football matches or whatever the majority wanted to do. It might have made her more girlie in her preferences, but she also understood she was one of the team."
Cate Blanchett. Photo / Getty Images
Sometimes it is the father who is responsible for creating a combustible situation. Mainly through an unapologetic desire to protect, cosset and indulge his "Daddy's girl", David Beckham has said he often "wells up" when he looks at his three-year-old daughter, Harper, adding, "To have a daughter is a whole different thing. I'm not saying I love my daughter more, but the boys are independent."
As for being a Daddy's girl, if all those hyper-cute matching beanie hat photo ops weren't enough to convince, Beckham has also remarked of his daughter, "She's not going out. She's going to be like Rapunzel - up in the tower."
Maybe you could forgive a soppy male - or at least allow a little latitude. After all, suddenly the world of noisy, smelly boys, with their lavatory humour and mucky
football boots, has been supplanted by hair bows and ballet shoes. Yet in our house, Sophie repays her father's fathomless devotion by manipulating and manoeuvring him like a pint-size tactician. And so, we descend into good cop/bad cop parenting: I'm the bad one who enforces bedtime, and drags her away from the television when there is homework to be done. When her father appears in the evening, he is her knight in shining armour.
I remember once being utterly furious with Sophie because she had been incredibly cheeky to me, answering back and refusing to eat her supper as a form of protest (girls are superb blackmailers with food). Admittedly she was tired, but that could only explain rather than excuse her rudeness. When Martin came in from work, it was a race between us as to who could offload their angst first. My daughter won, dragging Daddy into his study before he had even shed his coat. She then turned in an award-worthy performance, comprising 10 bars of "Mummy has made me cry". I heard the door close, the tell tale rattle of sweets and Martin cooing something about "taking her to Claire's Accessories at the weekend".
My sons - Sam, 22, Max, 19 and Aaron, 17 - have, to their credit, adapted with great aplomb, indulging their sister as she makes demands for games of Monopoly Deal or piggyback rides. Yet they roll their eyes when, seemingly on a whim, she changes her mind about what she wants for supper - after I have served it. "We just had to eat what you gave us," Sam often reflects. "She's like a diner in a Michelin-starred restaurant."
There are, of course, lots of benefits to having a little girl. My daughter is also incredibly loving and affectionate. There's no greater feeling in the world than when she snuggles up for a kiss and a cuddle - especially when the boys don't do this anymore.
But, Cate Blanchett should beware. She may have convinced on screen with scary parts playing a wicked stepmother or Elizabeth I, but let me guarantee that mothering a daughter after three boys will be the actress's most demanding role yet.
And this time, there are no awards.
How to level the playing field:
According to Louise Tyler, an accredited counsellor, children don't categorise themselves by gender until around the age of three. "Until this age, they learn gender stereotypes and roles from their family and the world around them. You don't need to separate gender-based activities, such as expecting your daughter to play with dolls while your son kicks a ball around in the garden. Let both sexes happily participate equally in these activities." Parenting author Liat Hughes Joshi says a girl might be happy to tag along to events or days out aligned to her brothers' hobbies, but as the children grow older, parents should take cues from their youngest - the odd one out - about their interests. "Ignoring this completely can make the youngest quite attention seeking."
